Calendula's Cloak

1967
Haworth, Jann
The fictional Calendula’s sorceress-like cloak is part of Haworth’s pioneering body of work creating pop art soft sculptures. She called textiles 'the language of women' and used fabric to create life-size characters that rejected the depiction of women within Pop Art. Jann Haworth said of this context: ''The assumption was that, as one tutor [at the Slade School of Art] put it, ''‘the girls were there to keep the boys happy''. He prefaced that by saying ''it wasn’t necessary for them to look at the portfolios of the female students… they just needed to look at their photos''. From that point, it was head-on competition with the male students. I was annoyed enough, and American enough, to take that on. I was determined to better them, and that’s one of the reasons for the partly sarcastic choice of cloth, latex and sequins as media. It was a female language to which the male students didn’t have access.''
  • Artwork Details: 172.7 x 116.8 x 116.8cm
  • Edition:
  • Material description: cloth
  • Credit line: © the artist
  • Theme: Figurative
  • Medium: Textile
  • Accession number: AC 1025

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The Arts Council Collection is the UK's most widely seen collection of modern and contemporary art.

With more than 8,000 works by over 2,000 artists, it can be seen in exhibitions and public displays across the country and beyond. This website offers unprecedented access to the Collection, and information about each work can be found on this site.